Today’s UK Supreme Court ruling that the Bahraini government can be held to account for hacking laptops of people in Britain is the right decision.
Bahrain had claimed state immunity against claims it hacked the laptops of two Bahraini pro-democracy activists living in Britain. The decision means the two men, Dr. Saeed Shehabi and Moosa Mohammed, can now take their case to trial, more than a decade after the alleged hacking.
Shehabi is a founder of the opposition group al-Wefaq. Mohammed is a photojournalist who fled Bahrain in 2006. They are prominent critics of the Bahraini government, and live in the UK. They say that in 2011 Bahrain’s agents remotely installed spyware, known as FinSpy, on their computers while they were in Britain, giving the Bahraini government access to their personal data, locations, calls, and the ability to listen and watch through their devices’ microphones and cameras.
The court’s reasoning turned on section 5 of the State Immunity Act 1978, which denies a foreign state immunity for personal injury caused by an act committed in the United Kingdom. Bahrain argued that because the allegation is that its agents ran FinSpy from abroad, nothing relevant happened on British soil. The High Court rejected that argument in February 2023, the Court of Appeal upheld the ruling in October 2024, and today the Supreme Court dismissed Bahrain’s final appeal.
Human Rights First was in Courtroom 1 alongside Dr. Shehabi, Moosa Mohammed, and fellow activists when the judgment was handed down. It took just twelve minutes to deliver, closing a question that had been blocking accountability for years.
Bahraini officials thought they could safely attack dissidents whether they lived inside the country or not, but were wrong. Today the UK’s highest court confirmed that Bahrain’s impunity stops at its borders, and that a state which targets people living in Britain can be made to answer for it in a British courtroom.
This is not the first time a Bahraini claim to immunity has failed in the UK courts. In October 2014, the High Court in London confirmed that Prince Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa, son of King Hamad, was not immune from prosecution over allegations that he was involved in the torture of dissidents during the 2011 protests. Human Rights First has worked for many years to challenge Bahraini impunity. In 2024, it formally recommended and submitted evidence to the U.S. Department of State to impose visa sanctions on Prince Nasser under Section 7031(c) for his involvement in torture.
Shehabi and Mohammed can now take their cases to trial in British courts against the Bahraini government.
This is a landmark ruling against state impunity, offering some protection for human rights and those who defend them.
